Stop me if you’ve heard this one before…a Mac user wants to use an iPad but they can’t because of some list of requirements that iPadOS simply doesn’t achieve. They love the iPad hardware and think it’s more than powerful enough, but the software holds it back.

Oh, really, you’ve heard this one? Wild. 😝

You might respond to this with either “oh, it me,” or “oh my god, I can’t hear this complaint again, just use a Mac!”

On this blog, I’m not at all shy about my desire to get touch-enabled Macs. I think that enabling touch for macOS would make Macs more compelling, enable Apple to create Macs in exciting new form factors, and would make macOS accessible to more people since it would support more input methods.

This is where I remind people that I’m not arguing for anything to be taken away from anyone. Just like iPad users can choose to stay 100% touch and not use a keyboard or mouse, Mac users who don’t want to use touch won’t need to.

I contend that pretty much the entire “I wish the iPad did more” narrative is built on a wide and undying desire for macOS to get touch input and more flexible and portable hardware. Think about it, if I could walk into an Apple Store today and get a MacBook Touch with a hyper-portable form factor, an M4 processor, and a beautiful OLED screen, would I then also complain about the limitations of iPadOS? No, of course not!

There are plenty of people out there for whom iPadOS is great already. They aren’t bothered by less functionality compared to macOS and they likely even prefer the limitations since it makes for less they need to worry about. Or maybe they fall perfectly into one of the niches that iPadOS caters to and they don’t feel limited at all. These folks are perpetually frustrated with people like me who keep wishing that iPadOS did more or worked differently. I get it, it would be frustrating to feel like a product is already great for you, but people insist on complaining it doesn't do what they want. It might even drive you to say stuff like, "just get a Mac."

And that's just it: people like me do want a Mac for getting all of our stuff done, but Apple doesn't make exactly the Mac we want, so we lust after the iPad and lament how it doesn't get the job done for us. If the Mac we wanted existed, we'd buy that and not have nearly as much to say about iPadOS.